An ABCs for SB 13

7 min readMar 15, 2020

A White Settler Educator Cuts Up Her Textbook

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

In 2017, the Oregon Legislature passed Senate Bill (SB) 13 directing the Oregon Department of Education to create K-12 Native American Curriculum for inclusion in Oregon public schools and provide professional development to educators.

A is for Appropriate

To take or use without permission, or understanding, or partnership.

To pretendian.

To do White harm, carelessly, often with

dancing, laughter, and alcohol.

B is for Binding

An obligation that cannot be broken,

as in a treaty.

Something that connects two or more parts together,

you and I, ours and yours, them and us,

the pages of a book.

C is for Cede

To give up land (as if that were even possible), as in

the 1940 mural by George Melville Smith

in the Park Ridge, Illinois public library,

“Indians Cede the Land.”

Also, as in, to cede a point, to allow oneself

to be persuaded of an argument, as in,

the Indians Never Ceded the Land.

D is for Dawes Act

To survey land for duplicitous purposes;

to allot something that does not belong to you;

to deceitfully transform a citizen of one nation

into a second-class citizen of another nation;

to steal land;

hucksterism.

E is for Eradicate

To pull out by its roots.

(As in sending Indian children to boarding schools.)

As in, “You will not eradicate us — we are still here.”

F is for Fishing Rights

What has not been ceded.

As in, “Through the treaties we reserved that which is most important to us as a people. The right to harvest salmon in our traditional fishing areas. But today, the salmon is disappearing because the federal government is failing to protect salmon habitat. Without the salmon there is no treaty right. We kept our word when we ceded all of western Washington to the United States, and we expect the United States to keep its word.” — Billy Frank Jr. (Nisqually)

G is for Genocide

A policy of eradication (of a people).

A blueprint for elimination (of a people).

A strategy of removal (of a people).

A scheme of destruction (of a people).

H is for Honor the Treaties

A hashtag. See also:

#LandBack

#NoDAPL

#WaterIsLife

#StolenLand

#HonorTheSacred

#NotYourMascot

I is for Indigenous

Originating in a particular place and not meant to be moved, removed,

or pulled up by the roots.

As in, “In 1964,

the CIA,

the State Department,

and Defense Intelligence Agency

believed that the primary sources of communist strength in

South Vietnam are

indigenous.”

J is for Johnson v. M’Intosh

Doctrine of Discovery 2.0, 1823.

“Chief” Justice John Marshall:

“Indian inhabitants are to be considered

merely as occupants,

to be protected, indeed,

while in peace, in the possession of their lands,

but to be deemed incapable of transferring the absolute title to others.”

K is for Keystone XL Pipeline

A deadly oil pipeline built on stolen land. One of many.

See also: genocide.

L is for Long Hair

Resistance. Survivance.

As in a 1902 Commissioner of Indian Affairs report subtitled, “The short-hair order:”

“The returned male student far too frequently goes back to the reservation and falls into the old custom of letting his hair grow long.”

M is for Mutual Respect

A term that often shows up in declarations related to

Native American Heritage Month.

(See: The Princess Bride & Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”)

N is for Nation

A unit of sovereignty.

Peoplehood.

A People exercising self-determination.

The basis for an I-thou relationship rather than an I-it relationship.

O is for Occupation

A way of spending time.

As in the occupation of Alcatraz where Native activists spent

1 year, 6 months and 22 days of time

enforcing the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.

P is for Pen and Ink Work

Treaty-making.

As in: “We are now straitened and sometimes in want of deer,

and liable to many other inconveniencies,

since the English came among us,

and particularly from the pen-and-ink work

that is going on at the table.”

Q is for Qualifiers

Words that change the meaning of other words.

As in the 1858 Treaty with the Yankton Sioux.

Cash payments can be “discontinued entirely”

— at the discretion of the President of the United States —

“should said Indians fail to make

reasonable and satisfactory

efforts to advance and improve their condition.”

R is for Removal

In February 1857, federal troops forced peoples of the

Umpqua,

Molalla,

Rogue River,

Kalapuya,

Chasta Nations (among others)

to march 263 miles from southern Oregon north across rough terrain to the newly created Grand Ronde Reservation.

(See also: sea to shining sea.)

S is for Sovereignty

The authority of a People to govern themselves.

(See also: Honor the Treaties.)

T is for Treaties

Agreements between countries.
A very long list, dating back centuries, of unfulfilled — binding — promises to Indigenous Peoples.
(Not to be confused with entreaty, a humble request.)

U is for Unceded

Territories never signed away to the settler colonial state.

Never surrendered.

Still claimed. Still loved.

37.0902° N, 95.7129° W

19.8968° N, 155.5828° W

64.2008° N, 149.4937° W

18.2208° N, 66.5901° W

V is for Valuation

An accounting of something’s worth.

As in, “The capitalist valuation of Indigenous life is low compared to the valuation of oil pipelines” and “The valuation of the earth and the water is immeasurable.”

W is for Wampum Belts

The national archives.

X is for X-Mark

A way of signing a treaty.

As in the Treaty between the United States of America and the Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache Nations, 1853:

Wulea-boo, his x mark (Shaved Head) chief Camanche

Wa-ya-ba-tos-a, his x mark (White Eagle) chief of band

Hai-nick-seu, his x mark (The Crow) chief of band

Paro-sa-wa-no, his x mark (Ten Sticks) chief of band

Wa-ra-kon-alta, his x mark (Poor Coyote Wolf) chief of band

Ka-na-re-tah, his x mark (One that Rides the Clouds) chief of the southern Comanches

To-hau-sen, his x mark (Little Mountain) chief Kiowas

Si-tank-ki, his x mark (Sitting Bear) war chief

Tah-ka-eh-bool, his x mark (The Bad Smelling Saddle) headman

Che-koon-ki, his x mark (Black Horse) headman

On-ti-an-te, his x mark (The Snow Flake) headman

El-bo-in-ki, his x mark (Yellow Hair) headman

Si-tah-le, his x mark (Poor Wolf) chief Apache

Oh-ah-te-kah, his x mark (Poor Bear) headman

Ah-zaah, his x mark (Prairie Wolf) headman

Kootz-zah, his x mark (The Cigar) headman

Y is for Yesterday

A unit of time; how we got here; what’s been ignored.

Z is for Zephyr

The gentlest, warmest of the winds.

It carries with it all that has been.

It asks us to remember what is still possible.

Acknowledgements

My thinking for this piece was shaped by a lifetime of both conscious and unconscious learning. In the conscious column, I would like to mention a few works/thinkers that informed me here.

Postcolonial Love Poem, by Natalie Diaz

https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/postcolonial-love-poem

Whereas by Layli Long Soldier

https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/whereas

“The tensions between Indigenous sovereignty and multicultural citizenship education: Toward an anticolonial approach to civic education” by Leilani Sabzalian.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00933104.2019.1639572?journalCode=utrs20

Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States & American Indian Nations, Susan Shown Harjo, ed.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/238293/nation-to-nation-by-edited-by-suzan-shown-harjo/

Nick Estes

Our History is the Future

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/600136/our-history-is-the-future-by-nick-estes/

Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement (ed. w/ Jaskiran Dhillon)

https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/standing-with-standing-rock

The Red Nation Podcast

https://therednation.org/podcast/

“Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” by K. Wayne Yang and Eve Tuck.

https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630